Where it all hangs out
It’s Christmas Eve, and we’ve had a nice quiet dinner at home with the Christmas ham and a bottle of champagne. The corny Christmas TV programs are over. The tree is all lit up; the presents are wrapped and piled up underneath.
The house is all clean and the floors and ceilings vacuumed (spider webs). The fridge is full of food and the bar fridge full of sparkling wine (and a ham).
Christmas Day will be spent with family, and really, that’s what it’s for.
Merry Christmas!
I had decided to take advantage of a special deal with 23andMe and get my DNA tested. I am hoping to learn a bit about my deep ancestry from my mitochondrial DNA in this test, as well as some genetic health risks and susceptibilities.
I tried to order the kit a few days before. I eventually realised that my first order with 23andMe didn’t go through, so I ordered again. I received confirmation that it has been sent, which I hadn’t had before, so obviously I had done something wrong, or not done something, before. So far so good!
Timeline so far:
9 Dec 2010 – I ordered a kit from 23andMe
10 Dec 2010 – Kit was shipped from 23andMe
13 Dec 2010 – Kit arrived at my front door
15 Dec 2010 – I spat my sample into the test tube
16 Dec 2010 – Sample collected by courier
21 Dec 2010 – Sample arrived at the 23andMe lab, and I was reminded to register my kit on the website
The process takes 6-8 weeks, so there will be no new updates for a while.
In the meantime, I had ordered some books from Amazon. That order did go through, and all 5 of them have arrived – 3 all at once and the other 2 individually. I’ve read the first 3, the last one being Megan Smolenyak and Ann Turner’s Trace Your Roots with DNA, (2001). Even though the book is nearly 10 years old it gives an excellent introduction to the basics of DNA testing. They discuss the coming developments pretty accurately – more markers, more usefulness for mtDNA, more popularity and so better chances of matching with someone else’s test results.
All this reading has inspired me to more testing! I’ve ordered a test for my maternal uncle, and one for my unsuspecting father or brother.
I’ve also changed companies. I will be using Family Tree DNA for these and probably all subsequent tests. It’s not that I think that they are a better company, or do better tests; it’s more that they do different tests.
Family Tree DNA are more concerned with pure genealogy, whereas 23andMe are more concerned with the health aspects of DNA. It will be interesting to compare the two. Family Tree DNA has, as far as I can tell, the largest number of projects.
A project is what you join if you want to find matches with other people who may be relatives. The pricing is less expensive if you join a project. Most of the projects are for surnames. My husband, for example, is part of the Bassett project, so he can see how closely he is related to other Bassetts around the world, and where their most recent common ancestor came from. There is little point in getting your DNA tested unless you want to compare it with others’.
Other projects are for geographic areas. My uncle is one of the last of a line of Easons, the first of whom came to Australia from County Tyrone in what is now Northern Ireland, so he will be part of the Ulster Project. The story we were told was that Eason was originally a French Huguenot name with a d’ on the front of it. I have not found any evidence of this as yet, but then my trail runs cold in 1813 with the marriage of Sarah Irwin of Clogher, Tyrone, to Richard Eason of Armagh.
Family Tree DNA do not use couriers unless requested, so this story will unfold a little more slowly.
Image courtesy of Chris Harvey at Dreamstime.
Blog posts are a snapshot in time. Just as a photograph can tell you a lot about someone, so can a blog post, even when they talk about seemingly trivial things. Even memes, those things that seem to go around like a craze in primary school, can be meaningful.
I have been sorting through old drafts that were never published, and I found this one from October 2008:
Ten years ago I was:
- Working on the implementation of a new computer system to prepare for Y2K
- Sharing our new house with my sister’s family until theirs was ready to move into
- Wondering how long my mother’s new marriage would last (not long)
- Planting Australian natives in the garden
- Spending too much money
Five things on today’s to-do list:
- Give the cat his antibiotics (done)
- Call my Dad to see how my step-mother is doing (trying)
- Go and see my step-mother in hospital
- Meet an old friend for lunch (will do)
- Do some neglected housework (not done)
Five snacks I enjoy:
- My sister’s brownies
- Yoghurt
- A banana, or some grapes
- dry-roasted cashews
- Did I mention my sister’s brownies?
Five places I have lived (in no particular order):
- Beautiful leafy Hornsby in Sydney’s northern suburbs (for the last 20-odd years)
- Dubbo in Central Western New South Wales (where I grew up)
- A flat in Rockdale in Sydney’s south (while I was at uni)
- A semi-detached house in inner-city Stanmore (when I was finishing uni and starting work)
- Suva, Fiji (for about 6 months when I was 12)
Five jobs I have had:
- Salesgirl at Woolworths Variety when I was 14 or 15
- Sales assistant at Angus and Robertson book store in Dubbo between school and uni
- Bar attendant at a couple of southern Sydney pubs while I was at uni
- Clerk for the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs for a couple of years when I finished uni
- Computer programmer at the gas company
Five places I would like to visit:
- Ireland – Northern Ireland and the Republic
- The National Archives of Fiji
- Namibia (again)
None of this will have any significance for anyone outside of my family, I suspect. For my close family, however, it may mean a great deal. Not only does it say to anyone who is interested some details of my past and present life, but it has some bearing on other events that had great significance.
I suspect that I didn’t finish the post because of what was going on at the time. I did talk to my Dad about how my step-mother was doing, and I went to see her in hospital every day and sat with her while my sister, her daughter, raced home to get things done. We moved her home when the hospital could no longer do anything for her, and after a few days she passed away, in her own bed with her family around her. Only 11 days after I wrote this.
It still hurts that she was taken so soon. 60 is young, these days. Her father lived much, much longer.
I also remember meeting the old friend for lunch. He told me a trick to do with parking near the hospital before the afternoon peak hour.
It was a shock to read through this post after all this time. I thought I would share it with my family, and anyone else who is interested.
My first book, Social Media for Family Historians, was published in late 2010 by Unlock The Past. It explains what social media is; what use it is; and introduces you to more than 25 social media sites that can help family historians to communicate, share and collaborate with other family historians and with their own families. It [...]
Carole’s Family Tree I have been researching my family tree for a few years now, and there is always more information to find, more names to research, more relatives to talk to. My Australian family surnames are Eason, Irwin, Ewin, and Bell from Northern Ireland; Goode, Miles, Oates and Pascoe from England; and Stewart, Thomson [...]
